Trump has made ending the three-and-a-half-year-old war in Ukraine a priority since returning to office earlier this year. A month ago, he gave Russia 50 days to make peace or the U.S. would impose a total trade embargo against countries that refused to stop buying Russian oil. However, that timeline was eventually shortened to 10 days, ending on August 8.

The USA could hit Russia and its trading partners with severe economic losses, Trump. Unless the Kremlin stops its military operation, a second set of sanctions — secondary penalties — is to start later. Russian oil and gas revenues fell in July for the third straight month, the Russian Finance Ministry reported, driven largely by lower global oil prices.

Tariffs against India and A Plan to Hunt the Shadow Fleet
Russia, which is one of the world's largest oil exporters, has underwritten its war with energy profits. Russia has been secretly selling oil to India and China at cut rates, despite the best efforts of Western sanctions regimes to keep these revenues from its coffers. Trump has reacted sharply, and that too against India. In the past week, he has suggested a 25% tariff on Indian exports and now says it could go even higher within the next 24 hours.

"India is buying oil from Russia as well; they are not a good trading partner to us," and "India is also investing in the war machine," Trump rued.

It is also moving to target what it calls Russia's "shadow fleet"—a flotilla of untaxed, mostly out-of-date tankers employed as work-arounds for current sanctions. If implemented, it would be the first direct U.S. sanctions on Russia since the start of President Donald Trump's second term in January.

Putin Defends Series of Diplomatic Confrontations
Nonetheless, sources in the Kremlin have signalled that Putin is willing to press on with the war even as economic hardship mounts. He seeks the total conquest of four Ukrainian provinces, which he says will be part of Russia: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. All supersede the possibility of some diplomatic winnings or lightning sanctions, the Kremlin thinks.

According to a Russian business daily, Putin doubts further U.S. moves will have a blanket impact on his country after more than three years of the world slapping sanctions on Russia due to its actions in Ukraine and Syria. Still, tensions have risen between Moscow and Washington in recent weeks.

Trump announced the submarine transfer on Friday after threats from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. The Kremlin said it was a judgment call for the White House, but all sides should be "very, very careful" when discussing nuclear weapons.

But the new approach of Trump, reflecting U.S. frustration over Ukraine and his administration's looming date with reality on Russia sanctions, has proved to be a mixed blessing for Kyiv by alarming Kiev officials that the U.S. hostilities would be centred at its expense in a low-range fight against Moscow's military aggression. Now that the zero-hour clock is ticking so loudly in Moscow, everything depends on what Russia does, and whether enough financial pain has been inflicted to prompt reform.